"Price Is Right" winner claims new car a wreck

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The price was all wrong for one
contestant on "The Price Is Right," who claims the TV game show
and its authorized auto dealership tried to pass off a
rehabilitated wreck as a new car she won.

Donna Tillman said she won the 2004 Pontiac GTO Coupe
during her June 28, 2004, appearance on the game show. But she
was told after she paid the taxes and license fees that the
vehicle that appeared on the stage had mechanical problems,
according to a lawsuit filed on Thursday in Los Angeles.

When the car was delivered about eight weeks later, it was
not the model that had been displayed on the show and it had
more miles on the odometer than the car she had been promised.

Several months later when Tillman took her prize for a
service at a dealership in her hometown of Puyallup,
Washington, she learned the car had major damage to its frame
that had been repaired and concealed, the lawsuit said.

Tom George, the owner of Pontiac dealership Thorson Motor
Center, said Tillman received "a brand new car" and only
claimed it had been previously damaged after she wrecked it
herself.

"There is no record of it being in a wreck," George said.

A spokesman for Tillman said her minor fender bender led to
discovery of the previous damage.

"It had been reconstructed underneath to look like a new
vehicle but it was not," said law firm spokesman Geoff
Dulebohn. "What is clear is that she did not receive a new
car."